There are 8800M GTSs in 17" notebooks just a few fractions of an inch thicker than the MacBook Pro. I hate to break it to you but Apple's "1 inch rule" is pretty detrimental to the performance we receive, 1" is below a critical thickness that seems to render all but mid range graphics gear unusuable in the MacBook Pro, it'd only take a slight increase to allow for graphics cards 3x faster than the current.

If they thicken the MacBook Pro and taper the edges to make it appear thinner, a la the MacBook Air, then underclock an 8800M GTS, I reckon it'd be possible.

Apple are faced with a choice this time they haven't had before, there are no mid range cards that are a any real advantage over the current ones, there is only the mediocre 8600/8700 based chips, and the high end 3850/8800 end. The former might fit nicely in a MBP but it'd be a shockingly disappointing GPU for a three thousand dollar laptop. The latter would require a very small increase in thickness but would actually give the name MacBook PRO some justice.

I know, I mean the portability of the MacBook Pro is useful to me, although it has a grossly underpowered CPU for a pro laptop. In the 17" model I don't see why we should be sacrificing potentially an 8800M GTS or an HD3850 for literally 0.25 inches of thickness. If I cared that much about it being thin I'd get an Air.

Right now, the only way to get much more CPU is to take a desktop CPU and jam it into a notebook. I've known wto people that get that kind of notebook, they run very hot and have a battery life that's about that of a UPS brick, not good enough to do much work away from a power jack. They both had to deal with fans that died too.

As for a 8800M, I understand what you mean, but Apple doesn't seem to go that way.

There are 8800M GTSs in 17" notebooks just a few fractions of an inch thicker than the MacBook Pro. I hate to break it to you but Apple's "1 inch rule" is pretty detrimental to the performance we receive, 1" is below a critical thickness that seems to render all but mid range graphics gear unusuable in the MacBook Pro, it'd only take a slight increase to allow for graphics cards 3x faster than the current.

If they thicken the MacBook Pro and taper the edges to make it appear thinner, a la the MacBook Air, then underclock an 8800M GTS, I reckon it'd be possible.

Apple are faced with a choice this time they haven't had before, there are no mid range cards that are a any real advantage over the current ones, there is only the mediocre 8600/8700 based chips, and the high end 3850/8800 end. The former might fit nicely in a MBP but it'd be a shockingly disappointing GPU for a three thousand dollar laptop. The latter would require a very small increase in thickness but would actually give the name MacBook PRO some justice.

Although the MBP is a professional laptop, it is still a laptop. Portability and batter life are concerns. If you want a full scale machine to render intensive graphic functions, go with a desktop.

I don't think an HD3850 is too much to ask though, most major manufacturers have 17"ers out with cards of that level, it's pretty much what you'd expect from a 2.5-3k laptop. We're just used to less so when we look at what everybody else considers normal, it looks like super high end unrealistic stuff to us.

The only thing keeping an HD3850 out of the MBP is a fraction of an inch in case thickness.